Design Thinking is the only problem solving approach for innovation and design firm IDEO. It is a human-centered and design-based way of thinking for, well, pretty much everything. One of the key points of this type of thinking is to gather inspiration and insights from every possible source and should involve people from many different backgrounds and disciplines. Design thinking is participatory. You cannot have a good idea if you do not begin with lots of ideas. Simply put, IDEO is a big advocate for collaborative processes.

Earlier this month, IDEO launched a project called OpenIDEO. It is an open platform for people to work with IDEO on some social innovation projects. It is a place for creative thinkers to contribute ideas or to simply inspire others. But of course, people like you and me are invited to join the conversation too. OpenIDEO is an experiment put out by IDEO to see if the collaboration of small teams and the broader community can accomplish better results. Crowdsourcing harnesses the power of the community to address global challenges through collaboration.

How it works is that challenges are posted on the website and community members contribute to three different stages: inspiration, concept, and evaluation. Through crowdsourcing, the research stage will receive a much deeper and broader understanding of the topic. And during the ideation process, a wide range of possible opportunities and solutions can be explored. The community is invited to participate in many different ways, whether it be providing comments, sketches or observations. You can also build upon someone else’s idea by remixing it or deconstructing it. Everyone helps in selecting the top concepts, but ultimately the organization that initiated the challenge gets to decide whether or not to implement it.

Click here to read more into the principles behind the concept of OpenIDEO. If you’re interested in being part of the conversation, OpenIDEO asks that you sign up first. And if you or an organization have a great idea for social change, contact OpenIDEO and suggest to them a new challenge.